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Ready for a zombie apocalypse? CDC has advice

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issues zombie preparedness advice

It's a lighthearted way of getting people to think about disaster preparedness, a top official says

Dr. Ali S. Khan doesn't really expect the dead to rise -- but he does like "Resident Evil"

Getting ready for a zombie invasion is much like preparing for a hurricane, he says

(CNN) -- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a big, serious government agency with a big, serious job: protecting public health from threats ranging from hurricanes to bird flu.

So when the good doctors of Atlanta warned people this week about how to prepare for a zombie apocalypse, the world took notice.

"That's right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e," Dr. Ali S. Khan wrote on the CDC website this week, adding casually that "Resident Evil" is his "personal favorite" zombie movie.

As it happens, Khan, one of the nation's top-ranking public health professionals (he's a rear admiral and an assistant surgeon general), doesn't actually believe the living dead are about to claw their way out of graves and start chewing on your brain.

But, he and his communications team recently noticed, what they'd want you to do if the world really did suddenly go "Night of the Living Dead" is pretty much the same thing they'd want you to do in case of a hurricane or a major pandemic.

From that realization to the decision actually to put up a blog post was a short step, Khan said Thursday.

Khan floated the idea of what to do in a meteor strike on earth not long after becoming director of CDC's Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response eight months ago, he said, so his staff knew he was open to "novel and creative ideas to engage the public."